The way we talk

If the past 48 hours have felt like a horrific case of Deja vu to your eighth-grade history course, or like me, you subjected your mind to a fascism course in college – we are in the same space. I cannot pretend that the urge to hide under covers does not strike me in these moments. It feels as if we are on a collective merry-go-round of cruelty and chaos. It sweeps away all sense, and we must fight an extreme force before we can jump off back into some version of reality.

This has sadly become a “norm” in the US.

Throughout horrific events of the past week, I have seen a different type of anger. Not simply anger and sadness at what we have all witnessed. Not just anger at the loss of good people. An anger at the way it is debated in our news. At the journalists saying loss or dead. People want the words. They want to hear mainstream say murder, execution, fascism, and authoritarian state. They want to know why this is not happening. Why hasn’t it happened in the past decade?

They are right.

When you begin to study journalism, any form of professional writing really, we are taught that there are rules. Whether it be handed down by AP, ethics committees, or studies on how the general population will absorb your medium, there are rules as to what we say, how we say it and when.

I remember one of the biggest debates I would witness in early roundtables was about how death was written about. The expected way it is reported nationally, even globally. A classmate of mine raised the point that headlines reading “dead” and “died” felt cold, insensitive, and angered readers. My professor, a staunch AP ethicist in belief, explained the reason we never use euphemism is because they are more singular than we believe. That saying X person “passed away” would not translate on a larger scale, and in some circles may be deemed disrespectful. I remember he said something to the effect of, “They are dead. They died. There is no disrespect in reporting the fact of death.”

It feels final on all fronts. The word death. At that time, his argument felt correct to me. It is a fact. A journalist’s job is fact. If you are choosing to spend your life writing about real people, then we should be factual, always. It is the only way to truly respect them, and anyone reading your words.

Now, I have come to disagree with my old professor.

I do not disagree with his belief but sadly, there is a disturbing asterisk he did not add.

When we enter these spaces that we read about. We studied. When people did not simply “die” and in many ways we cannot describe it as “murder,” it becomes terrifying to not just writers or reporters, but to the whole of society. When we begin to label citizens losing their lives in the streets as executions, it reinforces the fact that we have lost not only a person, but we have also lost our way.

Words like execution were taught to be rarely used because it is rarely factual. Similarly, fascism and authoritarianism are rarely used in writing unless it was advised they can be applied 100% with absolute certainty. After all, when we label time periods and events with such dire language, it can incite a variety of reactions and consequences.

I have heard the calls before and read the frustration within factions of society for specific terms to be used over the past few years. I use the terms I feel define the time we live in within conversation, debate, and writing, depending on subject. Having the understanding at how deeply words matter – they are our record of life; I do not write things lightly.

While I respect my past professor and for most of time since have agreed with his point about not using language that feels incendiary or can twist a reader’s logic, I now must remember that of my fascism professor. He did not hold back on assignment, nor lectures on the importance of language within those regimes.

If we do not begin to use true language as these events unfold, it only gives power to those perpetrating these heinous acts. It allows them to hold power over our belief of what we are seeing.

The longer we maintain an even language for the sake of not shocking someone, the longer we pretend that what we have seen or experienced is not shocking.

I am shocked to my core that this is our world. While I have not been surprised for some time, I have not wanted to write a piece explaining that we must now understand the tide has turned. What has happened recently has been gut-wrenching, abhorrent and they are acts of a sect of society that no longer believes they must function as a democracy.

It is a slope of fascism.

It is execution for a citizen to be killed in the street, protecting another.

In a nation that claims freedom, justice, due-process, and legality to be the backbone of its founding, we cannot use fluff to pretend we are still living in that space. We must call things as they are. Language matters. The same way every single name of every person taken matters.